Mindfulness Isn't Just for Adults: Teaching Your Kids To Reset Is Essential

Today’s teenagers are more stressed and anxious than young people of that age group have ever been before. Somehow, all of the struggles of adolescence have become more stressful since we were their age. It's now essential to help them with mindfulness.

As a recap, here's the science-backed benefits of mindfulness for teens:

We know that teens need to be able to regulate emotions to feel good about themselves and to be well-adjusted psychologically. And we know that mindfulness can help stressed teens to do just that. The next question is how we present it to them so they'll give it a chance.

Mindfulness will only help anxious teens to relax if they take it in, own it, and understand how, why, and when to use it.

Teaching teens why mindfulness helps them can help motivate them to start a daily practice of mindfulness. That means helping them connect with the benefits of mindfulness in their daily struggles and teaching them exercises that can be most helpful. The most important thing is that they experience a positive change for themselves. 

For example, if your teenage daughter gets nervous every time she sits down for a test, teach her some calming and focusing exercises. Some of my favorites, which I included in my book Mindfulness for Teens in 10 Minutes a Day, are the “butterfly hug” relaxation exercise and the “If you see it, you can create it” visualization exercise.

One of the ways I found that works with teens is to give them a challenge. Teens these days are into various 30-day challenges that float around on social media. Challenge your teen to try an exercise for 30 days and, at the end, provide some reward. While the initial reward might be the incentive, sticking with mindfulness because of the results will be the overall reward.

Finally, we have to convince them that it’s not an onerous and time-intensive task. Kids are extremely busy, as we’ve discussed earlier, and they won’t do something that they think takes forever. We need to give them exercises that they can do in five or 10 minutes, in the privacy of their rooms. Better yet, we need to teach them exercises that they can do when they’re sitting in school or standing on an athletic field, feeling anxious and worrying if they’re going to do okay. 

We can’t expect teenagers to have their own coping strategies in place, nor can we solve all their problems for them. It is our responsibility to acknowledge the difficulties of what they're facing and teach them the skills that will help them cope. One of the best and most universally helpful skills out there is mindfulness.  

Yes, the rise of adolescent depression and anxiety is on the rise3, and it's having a negative impact on families. But no matter what's going on, with friends or at school or anywhere else, there are mindfulness exercises to help stressed teens with almost any problem they might be facing. As teenagers engage with the idea of mindfulness and use the exercises when they need them, they will notice the improvement in their daily life. They will quickly learn that this is a tool that will benefit them for the rest of their lives.